Google's DeepMind AI fakes some of the most realistic human voices yet

Google’s DeepMind AI fakes some of the most realistic human voices yet

Tweet Share Google’s DeepMind artificial intelligence has produced what could be some of the most realistic-sounding machine speech yet. WaveNet, as the system is called, generates voices by sampling real human speech and directly modeling audio waveforms based on it, as well as its previously generated audio. In Google’s tests, both English and Mandarin Chinese listeners found WaveNet more realistic than other types of text-to-speech programs, although it was less convincing than actual human speech. If that weren’t enough, it can also play the piano rather well. Text-to-speech programs are increasingly important for computing, as people begin to rely on bots and AI personal assistants like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa, and the Google Assistant. If you ask Siri or Cortana a question, though, they’ll reply with actual recordings…